Government has asked to remove some of international members of the UNICEF staff station in Colombo blaming that they had participated demonstration in the Capital,beyond their scope of legitimate functions,foreign ministry officials said.
Acting Foreign Secretary summoned the country representative of the United Nations' Children's Fund and demanded the removal of local members of the staff too who also took part in the demonstartion against the killing of two Red Cross volunteer workers few months ago.
The latest move against the UNICEF,is one of the series of controversy they faced within two weeks.
Sri Lanka Customs detained a container brought down by the UNICEF with a load of "Meals Ready to Eat"or MRE, after JVP raised suspicious over it saying that the food was brought to handed over to the LTTE.
The UNICEF denied the accusation by the JVP and said that it is normal routine to bring MRE for use of their staff working in emergency situation.
Earlier UNICEF was also blamed by the JVP-a nationalistic leftist party, which demand government should ban all UN officials visit to Sri Lanka in the future-funding LTTE through the TRO,the organization banned in Sri Lanka since this week.
UNICEF last week denied the JVP charges and said those remarks made their staff security in endanger.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Government demands UNICEF staff members expulsion
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6 comments:
UNICEF as an organisation is very large and highly bureaucratic. They totally rely on ground staff to operate within the UNICEF and UN framework.
However, what has happened in Sri Lanka is LTTE has cleverly injected their men and women into UNICEF and UN local and regional outfits over a long period of time.
Now these elements are working on LTTE's instructions, following LTTE's agenda.
Thanks to Tsunami and the then government backed ceasefire, LTTE has legitimised its operations through TRO and other LTTE affiliated NGOs, getting a larger foothold in the local UN and UNICEF outfits.
Now the local UN and UNICEF staff have lost their fear of reprisal for their LTTE led actions. They work on an illusionary framework that legitimise their actions.
The sad fact is the UN higher-up do not aware of the ground situation. They are being fed with false information by these LTTE led local staff.
It is time for UN and UNICEF to clean-up their local offices and bring back the former stature back in to the office. If the UN let the Sri Lankan local office continue this way led by LTTE, it will bring nothing but disgrace.
It is high time....!
Well said Noltte.
http://www.colombopage.com/archive_07/November23154637JR.html
well said noltte=peace..well said
yep,noltte=peace,well said,many aid agencies have been heavily infiltrated at the decision-making & grassroot level,by tiger sympathisers..we have gotta stop this trend..
Looks like the SLG's strategy of taking the UNICEF on worked pretty well.
This looks like a repeat of the ICRC vs Kadirgamar incident about a decade ago. That was when the ICRC used to play a neo-colonial role in SL, attempting to order the political process about like they were talking to subservient lackies. They didn't know what was in store when they took on Kadir, who lashed back threatening to shut down the ICRC offices and throw the whole lot out within 24 hours. Even then the UNP whimpered, but Chandrika stood by Kadir's stance, and the ICRC backed down. They never screwed around with us again.
There is a need to remind some of these white skinned neo-colonial wannabe's that we can bite, and not to read our usual hospoitality for weakness.
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